A heartbroken widow has paid tribute to her late husband and described him as the “life and soul of the party”.

Terry Cadman, 61, died last weekend in Scotland after suffering a brain hemorrhage - just days after travelling from his Acklam home to start work as a rigger at a Scottish shipyard.

Devastated Jan, who was married to Terry for 40 years, said her husband was a “real character” known by hundreds of people around Teesside.

But she says she has had to battle with his employers for help since Terry died on Sunday.

And Steve Cason, regional officer for Unite the union, believes that because Terry had been taken on a self-employed basis through an agency and not employed directly, Jan and his family missed out on help with the costs of a funeral and bringing him back to Middlesbrough.

Mr Cason said: “We want companies to employ workers directly, so they have the rights that we have fought for, which are designed for these situations.

“If you are self-employed, you decide when to start work, you decide when to finish, and you own the tools of production.

“When a company tells you when to work, what you will do and when you’re using their equipment, you become an employee.

“Terry’s family would have been entitled to a lot more help if he had been directly employed. We need to stop this happening to other people.”

Jan Cadman

Terry left a son Chris, 32, and a grandson Callum, six.

Jan said: “When I’ve tried to speak to the companies he was working for, they all seemed to want to pass the buck. Eventually, I was offered £381 by the agency to bring Terry home - I said, he’s not a piece of luggage, he’s my husband.

“I want things to change, I don’t want people to have to suffer what I have gone through.

“He worked as a rigger for 40 years all over the world. He deserves his dignity and his rights.

“He was a wonderful person, who was the life and soul of the party. He would have a laugh and a joke with everyone he met. Everyone loved him.”

Terry had taken ill while completing a trade test at a shipyard on Friday.

After being taken to hospital and having a scan, he decided to travel back to Middlesbrough.

At Kirkcaldy station, close to the shipyard, Terry collapsed with a brain hemorrhage. He died in hospital on Sunday.

Jonathan Hann, owner of Mechtech Professionals, the agency which set up Terry’s contract, said new workers are taken on in a variety of different ways - and disputed that someone who was directly employed would have been treated differently.

He said: “Agencies are there to supply a legal recruitment service, and we have people taken on in a variety of ways. People are not classed as self-employed to get around working rights.”

Nobody was available for comment at the company for which Mechtech supplies workers.

Jan said that both companies have offered small donations towards funeral costs.

A donation was made by Chris Watson on behalf of the Hartlepool Geographical 17 Unite branch, while other local Unite members have been asked to contribute to a collection.